This book is precisely what its name denotes it to be—a Synopsis. It does not profess to be a commentary, though each book is considered with some carefulness, and though I have often drawn the reader’s attention to even minute points which I thought illustrated the writer’s design. But my object was not to explain texts. I believe the force of particular sentences is not really felt, unless we can connect them with the purpose of the book in which they are found. I have sought for this purpose in each Gospel and Epistle which I have examined. I have desired still more earnestly to show that they have one common subject; that they refer to a Living Person; that when considered in relation to him they have a unity which we can discover by no collation of paragraphs.
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I have not troubled the reader much with what are called practical questions: first, because I have always found them very unpractical; secondly, because I do not think it is reverent to make use of the Bible for the purpose of pointing a moral or adorning a tale of ours. I believe it contains a revelation. I desire to ask what it reveals.